Peake, Mervyn - 02 Gormenghast

The Countess whistled with a shrill sweet note, and first one bird and then another flew to her. She examined them, holding them cupped in her hands. They were very thin and weak. She whistled their various calls and they responded as they hopped about her or sat perched upon her shoulders, and then, all at once a fresh voice from the wood silenced the birds. At every whistle of the Countess, this new answer came, quick as an echo.

Its effect on the Countess seemed out of all reason.

She turned her head. She whistled again and her whistle was answered, quick as an echo. She gave the calls of a dozen birds and a dozen voices echoed her with an insolent precision. The birds about her feet and on her shoulders had stiffened.

Her hand was gripping Titus' shoulder like an iron clamp. It was all he could do not to cry out. He turned his head with difficulty and saw his mother's face - the face that had been so calm as the snow itself. It had darkened.

It was no bird that was answering her; that much she knew. Clever as it was, the mimicry could not deceive her. Nor did it seem that whatever gave vent to the varying calls was anxious to deceive. There had been something taunting about the rapidity with which each whistle of the Countess had been flung back from the wood.

What was it all about? Why was his arm being gripped? Titus, who had been fascinated by his mother's power over the birds, could not understand why the calls from the wood should have so angered her. For she trembled as she held him. It seemed as though she were holding him back from something, as though the wood was hiding something that might hurt him - or draw him away from her.

And then she lifted her face to the tree tops, her eyes blazing.

'Beware!' she cried and a strange voice answered her.

''Beware'!' it called and the silence came down again.

From a dizzy perch in a tall pine, the Thing peered through the cold needles and watched the big woman and the boy as they returned to the distant castle.

FIFTY

I

It was not until close upon the Day, that Titus learned how something quite unusual was being prepared for his Tenth birthday. He was by now so used to ceremonies of one kind or another that the idea of having to spend his birthday either performing or watching others perform some time-hardened ritual made no appeal to his imagination. But Fuchsia had told him that there was something quite different about what happened when a child of the line reached the age of ten. She knew, for it had happened to her, although in her case the festivities had been rather spoiled by the rain.

'I won't tell you, Titus,' she had said, 'it will spoil it if I do. O it's so lovely.'

'What kind of lovely?' said Titus, suspiciously.

'Wait and see,' said Fuchsia. 'You'll be glad I haven't told you when the time comes. If only things were always like that.'

When the Day arrived Titus learned to his surprise that he was to be confined for the entire twelve hours in a great playroom quite unknown to him.

The custodian of the Outer Keys, a surly old man with a cast of the left eye, had opened up the room as soon as dawn had broken over the towers. Apart from the occasion of Fuchsia's tenth birthday, the door had been locked since her father, Sepulchrave, was a child. But now, again, the key had turned with a grinding of rust and iron, and the hinges had creaked, and the great playroom opened up again its dusty glories.

This was a strange way to treat a boy on his tenth anniversary; to immure him for the entire day in a strange land, however full of marvels it might be. It was true that there were toys of weird and ingenious mechanism; ropes on which he would swing from wall to wall, and ladders leading to dizzy balconies - but what of all this, if the door was locked and the only window was high in the wall?

And yet, long as the day seemed, Titus was buoyed up by the knowledge that he was there not only because of some obsolete tradition but for the very good reason that he must not be allowed to see what was going on. Had he been abroad he could not fail to have gained some inkling, if not of what lay in store for him that evening, at least of the scale on which the preparations were being conducted.

And the activity of the castle was fantastic. For Titus to have seen a tenth of it must have taken the edge, not off his wonder or speculation, but off the shock of pleasure that he was finally to receive when evening came. For he had no idea what kind of activities were taking place. Fuchsia had refused to be drawn. She remembered her own pleasure too keenly to jeopardize a hundredth part of his.

And so he spent the day alone and save for those times when his meals were brought in on the golden trays of the occasion, he saw no one until an hour before sunset. At that hour four men came in. One of them carried a box, which when it was opened revealed a few garments which Titus was invited to put on. Another carried a light basketwork palanquin, or mountain-chair that rested on two long poles. Of the other two, one carried a long green scarf, and the other a few cakes and glass of water on a tray.

They retired while Titus got into his ceremonial clothes. They were very simple. A small red velvet skull-cap and a seamless robe of some grey material that reached to his ankles. A fine chain of gold links clasped the garment at his waist. These, with a pair of sandals, were all that had been brought and while he strapped the sandals he called to the men to re-enter.

They came in at once and one of them approached Titus with the scarf in his hand.

'Your lordship,' he said.

'What's 'that' for?' said Titus, eyeing the scarf.

'It's part of the ceremony, lordship. You have to be blind-folded.'

'No!' shouted Titus. 'Why should I be?'

'It's nothing to do with me,' said the man. 'It's the law.'

'The law! the law! the law - how I 'hate' the law,' cried the boy. 'Why does it want me blindfolded - after keeping me in prison all day? Where are you going to take me? What's it all about? Can't you talk? Can't you talk?'

'Nothing to do with m' said the man; it was his favourite phrase. 'You see,' he added, 'if we don't blindfold you it won't be such a surprise when you get there and when we undo the scarf. And you see' (he continued as though he had suddenly become interested in what he was talking about) 'you see - with your eyes blindfolded you won't have any idea of where you are going - and then, you know, the crowds are going to be deathly silent and...'

'Quiet!' said another voice - it was the man who had the mountain-chair. 'You have overreached yourself! Enough sir, for me to say' (he continued, turning to the boy) 'that it will be for your pleasure and your good.'

'It had 'better' be,' said Titus, 'after all 'this'!'

His longing to get out of the playroom mitigated his distaste for the blindfolding, and after taking a drink of water and cramming a small cake in his mouth, he took a step forward.

'All right,' he said and standing before the scarf-man, he suffered himself to be bandaged. At the second turn of the scarf he was in total blackness. After the fourth he felt the cloth being knotted at the base of his head.

'We are going to lift you into the chair, your lordship.'

'All right,' said Titus.

Almost immediately after he was seated in the basket-work chair he found himself rising from the ground, and then after a word from one of the men, he felt himself moving forward through black space and the slight swaying of the men beneath him. Without a word, or a pause, each man with an end of the long bamboo poles resting upon his shoulder, they began to move ever more rapidly.

Titus had had no sensation of their leaving the room, although he knew that by now they must have left it far behind. It was obvious that they were still within the walls of the castle for he could both feel the frequent changes of direction which the tortuous corridors made necessary, and also he could hear the hollow echoing of the bearers' feet - an echoing which seemed so loud to Titus in his blindness that he could not help feeling that the castle was empty. There was not a sound, not a whisper in the whole labyrinthine place to compete with the hollow footfalls of the men, with the sound of their breathing or with the regular creaking of the bamboo poles.